


you and me and holiday wine

by taywen



Category: Uprooted - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/F, F/M, Gen, Holidays, Light Angst, Post-Canon, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 08:57:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taywen/pseuds/taywen
Summary: Sarkan attempts to celebrate Midwinterproperly, no thanks to Agnieszka. She just finds his questions about what kind of gift she wants baffling; aren’t there more pressing issues? Like Kasia having to cancel her visit to the valley, and the Wood.





	you and me and holiday wine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [athenasdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenasdragon/gifts).



> I hope the holiday season has treated you well, athenasdragon!
> 
> title is from Sia’s “Everyday is Christmas”.

“What on earth is wrong with you?” Sarkan’s voice was cutting as usual, though the setting was unfamiliar: he seldom ventured into the Wood, and he never set foot beneath its boughs without her leading him. Yet here he was, standing in the doorway of her comfortable cottage, a thundercloud of a frown settled on his face.

Agnieszka could not say how much time had passed since reading the letter and Sarkan’s caustic but sincere inquiry. The forest beyond him was much darker: the sun must be close to setting, though she’d only paused in her daily tasks to eat dinner and read Kasia’s letter at her leisure. She’d wanted the comfort of her home and Kasia’s words because she’d made plans to eat supper in the tower with Sarkan and there were more bad memories than good of that place.

“Agnieszka,” Sarkan said, the concern from earlier at the forefront now. He had come into the cottage fully, and was looking at her forgotten meal, his frown more confused than angry. “Has something happened? Is Kasia—Are the children—”

“They’re all right,” Agnieszka said. Her voice was surprisingly hoarse, so she took a sip from the cup of water beside her mostly-full plate. The familiar taste of the Spindle-water was comforting too, as was Sarkan’s disapproving scowl at the sight. He still insisted upon conjuring his own beverage when he visited, though he’d unbent enough to eat her food so long as she prepared it in front of him. “But Kasia is needed at Stashek’s side. There’s some kind of diplomatic visit—”

The details were unimportant to her. All that mattered was that Kasia would not be returning to the valley in a few weeks’ time. Agnieszka slid the letter to Sarkan, and busied herself with cleaning up as he scanned its contents.

“Better for her to stay with the king while the Rosyan embassy is in Kralia,” Sarkan said. “Alosha is still recovering, and Solya can be an utter fool at times.”

“I know that,” Agnieszka said, because she did; but that didn’t mean she had to _like_ it.

Sarkan blinked, obviously taken aback by her sharp tone. “Well, then why have you wasted your day moping around about it?”

“This may be difficult for you to understand,” Agnieszka snapped, “but most people need others to survive. We can’t all lock ourselves up in towers and kidnap girls once every ten years and call that a life well-lived.”

The words hit their mark; perhaps someone who did not know Sarkan as well as she did—which was to say no other person yet living—would not notice it, but he flinched nearly imperceptibly before his face hardened.

“Then perhaps you can bring yourself to set foot outside this cursed forest and visit your beloved Kasia yourself,” Sarkan retorted. “Though I should hope you’d make yourself more agreeable to her; neither of you are children any longer, and I doubt she’ll appreciate tantrums!”

She _could_ just go visit Kasia; they’d returned to Kralia after Sarkan had decreed it free of the Wood’s corruption, and it was much closer than Gidna. But she didn’t like the idea of leaving the Wood, much less the valley; why should she have to? But what she said aloud was, “I suppose you would be the authority on tantrums!”

Any lingering hurt in Sarkan’s expression was subsumed by anger; he took a slow breath, and when next he spoke it was with a forced calm: “You are obviously upset; you’re even more irrational than usual, impossible as that is to believe. I’ll leave you to it.” And with that, he dropped Kasia’s letter—one edge crumpled from his furious grip—and stalked out.

The anger only seemed to burn hotter in his absence. She picked up her cup and drained what was left; warm as it was, the water still cleared her head, and she realized how strange the conversation—her entire reaction to the letter—had been.

“Sarkan!” she called, rushing out of her cottage. He had nearly reached the edge of her little clearing, but paused at the treeline, his back stiff; he did not turn to her. “I’m—sorry,” she said, although she wasn’t any longer, but now that she was aware of the strange cast of her emotions, she could try to overcome it. “There’s something—strange.”

He came back over to her, though he was still furious. “Now you go for more of that cursed water!” Sarkan shouted, disbelieving, as she snatched up the jug she kept next to her door and hurried to the river. She drank straight from the vessel, heedless of the liquid that spilled past her mouth. Each draught of cool water cleared the fog a little more.

“Are you quite finished, you infuriating woman?” Sarkan demanded icily, after she refilled the jug and brought it back to him. “Don’t be ridiculous!” he added sharply when she held it out to him.

“All right, but something strange is happening. I shouldn’t have been that upset over Kasia’s letter, any more than I should have been angry with you. I think there’s—”

Sarkan snatched the jug out of her hand, frowned down at the clear cool water within, then drank it all at once. Of course, he didn’t spill a single drop. “How you managed to drench yourself with a single pitcher,” he muttered, shaking his head. “The source of this disturbance must be nearby. I was accosted by a group of walkers before I even entered the Wood, but they disappeared into the trees when I drew near to your cottage.”

Agnieszka closed her eyes, reaching out carefully with her magic. She could feel the bright spark of Sarkan’s presence as he stomped over to the Spindle to refill the jug, muttering all the while; beyond him, less potent but infinitely more vast, was the Wood itself. The lingering corruption of all the hidden heart-trees she had yet to find was also present, but no more prominent than usual. There was—something. It was drawn to her magic, like a flower turning its face to the sun—

Sarkan shook her, hard enough that her teeth rattled together, and all but forced her to take another drink of the Spindle-water. “Well?” he said impatiently when she was done. “You obviously found it.”

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and nodded, leading him over to the trees behind her cottage. Tucked beneath an exposed root, its stem and leaves an impossibly bright shade of green, was a single bloom. The centre was entirely black, a void that sucked in all light, and its petals were a pure white that gleamed iridescent in the last rays of the setting sun.

It was beautiful. Too beautiful to be entirely benign: its eye-catching colours reminded her of the venomous snakes she’d read about in one of Sarkan’s many books, the ones that need not hide for any predators knew their pattern to spell danger.

Agnieszka shook herself and stood; she hadn’t noticed herself kneeling before it. The half-full jug was still in her hand, so she drained the rest of the water and turned to Sarkan. He was crouched in front of the flower, leaning close—

“Don’t,” Agnieszka snapped, grabbing his outstretched hand and yanking him back toward the river. His fingers curled around her own, but he followed after her eagerly enough, nearly tripping on her heels. She filled the jug again and held it out to him; he took it awkwardly in his left hand, as he refused to release her, and drank his fill. She watched his throat work above his intricately embroidered collar; a stray drop of water slipped past his lips, curving down his chin and following the line of his neck.

“This is ridiculous,” Sarkan said a few seconds later, though he sounded rather resigned; that only made Agnieszka’s lust transform swiftly into utter dejection as he held her at bay long enough to conjure another jug so they could drink at the same time.

Taking sips of the Spindle-water as soon as they felt the flower’s influence upon them seemed to help; soon, Sarkan had the bloom secure in a large jar. It had a single pale taproot, not particularly thick or long, and if it felt deprived by the lack of open air, it gave no indication. As soon as Sarkan had closed the lid, the flower’s effect upon them disappeared; she only felt unjustly exhausted now.

“You didn’t destroy it,” Agnieszka said as he tucked the jar carefully into his satchel. “Not that I’m complaining,” she added swiftly when he opened his mouth—no doubt to lecture her upon the potentially inimical effects of casting random workings on unknown magical objects. The flower didn’t feel evil, even now that it was contained in the jar; it had only seemed to affect their emotions to a dangerous degree. Naturally, Sarkan would want to study it.

“You should stay in the tower tonight,” Sarkan said, then flinched when a group of walkers suddenly appeared out of the trees, their birch-pale skin bright in the moonlight as they hovered around them in an obviously fretting manner.

“Well, all right. I’ll keep you safe from the dark,” Agnieszka said lightly, smiling when he glared at her.

Surprisingly, he even allowed her into his bed after that comment, though he insisted they do nothing more than _sleep_ , as if the flower could still be affecting their faculties, or creating something that wasn’t actually there. And he called her ridiculous.

Agnieszka sighed loudly, but otherwise didn’t push any further. She’d meant what she’d said about needing others to thrive: just having Sarkan beside her was like a balm, though she missed Kasia fiercely. Whether it was the dashed hope of seeing her again, or a lingering effect of the strange flower exaggerating that disappointment was difficult to say: so perhaps Sarkan had a point.

She stared up at the now-familiar ceiling as Sarkan breathed slowly beside her. He had been wrong about her visiting Kasia—or at least, she couldn’t _yet_. She couldn’t leave the valley before the Wood was cleansed; she’d staked a claim when she put the Wood-Queen to rest and made her home at the Spindle’s edge and started the arduous task of finding and cleansing all the corrupted heart-trees. If she left the valley now that claim would be abandoned, and she knew instinctively that she would not be able to pick it up again if that were to happen.

“Are you still awake?” Sarkan’s drowsy mumble disturbed her thoughts, but when he curled an arm around her waist she relaxed into his embrace. “Worried about that bizarre shack you call a home? We’ll check the clearing in the morning.”

She smiled faintly into the darkness, and let sleep take her.

* * *

Sarkan insisted upon a host of wards and other workings of protection before he would even considering setting foot inside the Wood.

“It wouldn’t have let us leave if it really meant to harm us,” Agnieszka pointed out, which only set him off again. She was tempted to see how he’d react to a reminder that the walkers had obviously been aware something was wrong but returned soon after the flower was contained, but it seemed more trouble than it was worth. He still viewed the creatures with suspicion, as they were native to the Wood.

The walkers greeted her as usual; if they noticed the various layers of protection Sarkan had laid upon both of them, they gave no sign of it. The escort was larger than she had grown accustomed to, but their behaviour was normal otherwise as she and Sarkan made their way to her cottage. She handed out the last of her supply of golden fruit—she hadn’t got around to collecting more the day before—and filled both jugs with Spindle-water. Sarkan accepted his without protest.

The area around her cottage was unchanged in the light of day. No too-beautiful flowers lurked at its edges, and the walkers seemed almost impatient as she and Sarkan checked for any unknown influences.

“There’s nothing,” Agnieszka said at last, pausing to take a sip of water. It was hot out today, probably one of the last really warm days before the leaves began to turn.

“The flower must have arrived here somehow.” Sarkan frowned in the general direction of where they’d found it. “Even the heart-trees needed to be planted by walkers.”

“The seed could have blown here and only just bloomed yesterday.”

“Perhaps.” Sarkan did not sound convinced, but neither did he make an argument. But the explanation didn’t sound quite right to her either.

A walker stepped toward her and gently tugged at her sleeve, pointing with its other arm in the same direction that Sarkan was glaring. The nearest healthy heart-tree was that way, and she needed to replenish her stock in any case, so she collected her basket and followed.

“Where are they taking us?” Sarkan grumbled, close at her heels. He made considerably more noise than she did, even without the steady stream of muttering, but he had gotten much better at traveling through the Wood; she would’ve been able to hear him long before she heard him when he first started willingly entering the Wood. Now, he only seemed to step on a twig or a particularly crunchy bit of undergrowth every few minutes rather than every other step, and his footsteps themselves were softer and more sure as well.

He’d never be a hunter, but the very idea would likely baffle and outrage him; as if he needed to hunt for food when the villagers of the valley provided him with tribute and he could conjure it up with _lirintalem_ anyway.

“What are you giggling about now, you unbelievable wretch?” Sarkan sighed.

Agnieszka bit the inside of her cheek. “Nothing. And I don’t know where we’re going, but the walkers must think it’s important. Usually they lead me to corrupted heart-trees or trapped animals, so it could be anything.”

She glanced back at him when the silence—well, aside from the cracking of at least three fallen twigs in a row beneath his exquisitely-tooled leather boots—lasted rather longer than usual.

“When you told me the walkers led you to corrupted heart-trees, I thought it was in jest!” Sarkan burst out.

“Well, I can find them myself, but it’s faster this way.” She was becoming more familiar with the Wood, but she still didn’t know it like the walkers did; perhaps she never would.

“What if they lead you into a trap?” Sarkan demanded.

“They wouldn’t,” Agnieszka said firmly, and made a note to never mention the pit trap some enterprising, corrupted denizen of the Wood _had_ left for her. Besides, she had made even greater strides to cleansing the Wood completely since then. It probably wouldn't happen again.

The quality of the air around them suddenly changed, and Sarkan’s muttered imprecations dropped off immediately. He stepped up beside her, his magic coiled tightly beneath his skin. Through the trees ahead, she could see a clearing, with a single large tree in the centre. The scene was quite similar to how she found most of the heart-trees, but that was no heart-tree.

She’d been humming her walking song as they went, and if her internal compass was not badly askew they were close to the gully where the Wood-Queen slumbered in her sister’s embrace—yet Agnieszka could hear nothing of the Spindle.

She exchanged a look with Sarkan; the walkers had all halted as well, as if unwilling to leave the cover of the trees. The clearing was large enough that the surrounding woods did not shade the entirety of the forest floor, and sunlight shone down brightly on the lone tree.

“It doesn’t feel corrupted,” Sarkan said, though he did not take his eyes off the clearing.

“But there is something strange.” It was the sort of imprecise language that Sarkan despised; the fact that he did not protest was telling.

Agnieszka went first, every sense alert; but as she stepped into the sunlight, she saw that the tree was dead. Its jewel-green leaves hung limply from drooping branches; the ground was littered with many that had already fallen. She felt disoriented, as if she’d entered a room expecting to find someone within and been greeted by emptiness instead.

Some vestige of the tree’s presence lingered, but it was a pale shade, hinting at something far vaster with just those fading traces. The pale grey bark was cold when she put her hand to it, in spite of the heat of the day; she cocked her head, as if she could catch the last echoes of its dream if only she listened hard enough. But there was nothing to hear, now.

“Is this the flower’s source?” Sarkan sounded dubious as he frowned up at the strange tree.

“It bloomed on its own.” The flower had been hidden by another tree, but it had taken root by itself. Yet it felt—similar to this dead tree.

“This was a heart-tree,” Sarkan said.

“No—” Agnieszka stopped, and looked at it again. The bark had the same texture, the leaves the same shape, but the colours were all wrong and it felt—empty. The heart-trees all had a kind of consciousness, corrupted or otherwise; even the ones that died of natural causes, rare as they were, had some echoes of their dreams. “It doesn’t feel like a heart-tree,” she amended. “But it resembles one.”

Sarkan nodded. After a moment, he pulled out several other containers and started collecting samples from the tree.

“What do you want for Midwinter?” Sarkan asked abruptly, once the specimens were secure in his satchel.

Agnieszka blinked, thrown by the abrupt change of topic. “I—What?”

Sarkan’s glare was eloquent, but he repeated himself with surprising patience.

The question made little more sense the second time. “It isn’t even time for the harvest yet?”

Sarkan sighed heavily, as if she was the one being utterly absurd.

“Don’t even think about making a comment about how time moves more quickly for old men like you,” Agnieszka said. He looked as if he’d only seen a few winters more than her, though she knew he had to be more than a century older; but that made no difference to her. He was the one who always seemed to be bringing up the gap in years between them.

Of course, that offended him, though she hadn’t been calling him an old man at all, and he returned to the tower in a huff.

Knowing she thought of his haughty anger as a huff would probably offend him too. Shaking her head, Agnieszka returned to her cottage to carry out her daily rounds. They’d been interrupted yesterday, and she was getting a late start today; she’d need to work quickly if she wanted to finish before sundown.

* * *

Agnieszka went willingly to the tower a few days later. Usually they waited a little longer for any lingering anger between them to fade, but Sarkan had probably spent these past days examining the flower and the strange heart-tree. If something had happened, or if he had fallen under the flower’s influence again, he might need her help.

She’d done what she could on her own: she’d asked the walkers if they could take her to any other heart-trees like the dead one, but they’d only led her to other corrupted trees that she’d duly cleansed or put to rest. Trying to glean traces of magic similar to the flower had been just as futile, and when she returned to the clearing, any lingering sense of the dead tree had faded entirely.

She found the flower in the laboratory suspended in a bubble of magic—a _containment field_ , Sarkan’s voice chided in her head—above the main worktable. The flower’s stem had sprouted a number of thorns and thistles since she had seen it last, though it did not much resemble a rose. It was beautiful as ever, and she stared at it for several moments before taking a sip from the flask of Spindle-water she’d brought with her: but there was no change in her emotions or thoughts, so the flower remained contained.

Sarkan was nowhere in evidence, however; the library was similarly deserted. She could feel his presence, the steady hum of his magic intimately familiar to her now: he was somewhere in the tower. He wasn’t the type to nap during the day—or if he did, it was without planning for it, dozing off over a particularly dry tome or while waiting for the correct time to add a certain ingredient to a potion—and it was around dinnertime. Perhaps he was making himself something to eat. She grinned at the thought; as if he wouldn’t simply conjured something for himself.

But he was in the kitchen, making—soup, by the looks of it. Agnieszka stared, but seeing him stirring a pot of broth wasn’t _too_ different from watching him brewing some complicated potion or other, after all.

“It smells good,” Agnieszka said. Sarkan didn’t twitch, though he did cast her an annoyed look over his shoulder before turning back to the soup. There were two places set at the modest table; Agnieszka blinked at the settings, then sat down on her side. They ate here when Agnieszka cooked: she refused to bring Sarkan trays like she used to.

“I felt you coming,” Sarkan said. “If you wanted to sneak up on me, you should have used the translocation spell.”

“My walking song works just fine.” Besides, he hadn’t managed to get it to work properly within the Wood’s boundaries, and if she’d already walked all the way to the treeline, she might as well walk the rest of the way too. “The fruit gets weird if I take it with me.” She smiled when he glared at her.

“You always bring me such marvelous gifts. How can I ever repay your kindness?” His sardonic tone lacked its usual edge, though.

Agnieszka laughed. “Well, I’d feel more appreciated if you actually ate one.”

Sarkan looked distinctly unimpressed as he brought the steaming pot over to the table and filled their bowls. The soup was plain but hearty, and it tasted as wonderful as it had smelled. Agnieszka finished it quickly and took a second helping, soaking up the dregs with the bread Sarkan had set earlier.

“What happened with the flower?” Agnieszka asked. “I couldn’t find anything else in the Wood. The original tree’s presence has faded completely.”

Sarkan ate far more slowly than she did; he was still on his first bowl. When she still brought him his meals, he’d pick at the food in between pages of whatever book he was reading, until the meal had gone cold at his elbow; then he’d reheat it with a word, transforming it into something else entirely. And he never seemed to care what he was eating, so long as it didn’t look like a congealed mess.

“It originated from the tree we found, but it isn’t like the fruit of a heart-tree at all.” That much was obvious, but Sarkan did like to establish all the facts; and in this case, Agnieszka couldn’t fault him for it. The flower had affected both of them, and it was only luck that she’d even noticed something was off. “The samples of the tree suggest it was once a heart-tree, but I can’t explain why or how it changed, or why it died.”

“Maybe the change killed it?” Agnieszka frowned, mulling it over. “It wasn’t corrupted, though. And I didn’t cleanse it either.” The only uncorrupted heart-trees she’d ever seen that she hadn’t cleansed herself were in the glade where the Wood-Queen slumbered.

“I don’t believe the flower is inherently dangerous. It can amplify one’s emotions, but beyond that—”

“It has thorns now,” Agnieszka pointed out. “So it can transform to some extent as well.”

Sarkan looked faintly embarrassed. “It didn’t like some of the workings I cast. I haven’t tested it much beyond that. It seems to have some sentience. Stop making that ridiculous face,” he added stiffly when she started to grin because, well, he cared about the flower’s feelings.

“Did you name it?” Agnieszka asked.

“ _No_.”

As if she believed that. He’d probably documented its every aspect on a sheet—several sheets—of parchment somewhere. He’d definitely given it a name, no matter how detached and technical he tried to make it.

“I did not name it!” Sarkan insisted, though she had said nothing further. He scowled all the harder when she told him as much. Her gentle teasing didn’t outrage him too much, though, and she ended up spending a pleasant night at the tower.

* * *

“The Dragon came by,” her mother told her the next time she came for supper.

Agnieszka tensed. “What? Why?” For a panicked moment, she thought he might have meant to ask her father for her hand. Neither of them were particularly conventional, and it wasn’t that she found the idea particularly unpleasant, but some part of her hesitated to take that step all the same. It felt final, somehow, like coming to the end of the book. There would be another volume after, of course, but all the same—

“He was asking about what sort of things you liked.” Her father sounded as bewildered as Agnieszka felt. “I don’t know that we were particularly helpful to him.”

“I think he wanted gift ideas. For Midwinter, maybe,” her mother said. “I told him to buy you a proper ring.”

“Mama!” Agnieszka protested, her cheeks going hot.

Her mother only clucked her tongue, unrepentant. “Eat your pierogi.”

Agnieszka scowled at her, though her annoyance was only partly with her mother. This was getting out of hand. It seemed as if Sarkan asked her what she wanted for a gift every time they saw each other.

“Have you had any word from Kasia?” her father asked hurriedly.

Agnieszka bit her lip, pushing her food around the plate distractedly. “Yes. She’s busy with her duties in Kralia. Apparently a delegation from Rosya means to stay the winter.”

“So there’s no chance of her coming to visit before the new year. That is too bad,” he said, trying, in his gruff way, to offer some comfort.

Agnieszka nodded. Kasia had said she would try to return home in her latest letter, but Stashek obviously couldn’t spare her. If the alternative was leaving Stashek and Marisha with only Solya and a still-recovering Alosha, there was only one choice that Kasia could make.

“That hawk didn’t try to propose again, did he?” Her mother’s question was teasing, but also curious.

“No, the Falcon hasn’t asked for her hand again.” Solya had gotten what he wanted out of that whole thing, as far as Agnieszka could tell. “But some Rosyan lord proposed to her a few days before she wrote her letter.” Kasia had seemed bewildered by her popularity, though she was beautiful enough to turn just about any man’s head; to say nothing of her steadfast loyalty, and her unwavering strength.

Well, Agnieszka could see why all these strangers would want to marry Kasia, even if she didn’t like the idea one bit. Kasia could take care of herself, of course, but—

Her father cleared his throat, and changed the subject to the upcoming harvest—a far less fraught topic that carried them through the rest of the meal.

* * *

The next time Sarkan asked, in the most roundabout way yet, what Agnieszka might want for a gift, Agnieszka—snapped.

“I don’t know, Sarkan. I don’t need anything. What do _you_ want for a gift?” she demanded.

Sarkan drew himself up, bristling all over like a hedgehog. He probably wouldn’t appreciate that comparison either. “It’s different,” he snapped, then took in a slow breath. After a moment he continued, with deliberate patience that only emphasized how impatient he truly felt, “All I’ve done is take from you. I took you from your home, I took your magic for those workings—”

“Did you hear me complaining about you taking me last night?” Agnieszka asked, trying to distract him. “Because I remember enjoying it quite a bit.”

Colour flooded Sarkan’s cheeks. “Well. That is. I—Don’t change the subject,” he snapped, narrowing his eyes when he saw her grin. “I got something out of that too, so it isn’t remotely the same.”

“You gave me Jaga’s book,” she tried. He’d said it was one of the most expensive and difficult to acquire volumes in his collection.

He scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why would I insist upon keeping it, when it was useless to me?”

Agnieszka breathed in slowly, aware that this could easily turn into a bad argument. She didn’t understand _why_ he was so insistent, though. Usually she could understand his motives, even if she didn’t agree with them, but his stubborn insistence that he find her a gift was completely incomprehensible. “Well, if you don’t expect a present from me, then I hardly expect one from you,” she said finally.

A muscle in his jaw clenched and he turned away, busying himself with—some book or other. “That—That is sensible,” he said stiffly.

Agnieszka resisted the urge to do something drastic, like scream in frustration, and simply said her goodbyes instead.

The conversation stuck with her as she made her way back to the Wood, though. He had never struck her as the sentimental sort, but he had—softened, since she had come into his life. Maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous that he would want to exchange presents at Midwinter, though he hadn’t even expected a special meal the winter after he’d _taken_ her from Dvernik. Maybe he’d simply never felt close enough to anyone before to bother with celebrating.

Now she felt awful. She had to find a gift for him, but she honestly had no idea what to get him. He had a love of beautiful, well-made things— _expensive_ things that he could easily buy for himself if he so chose. He liked intricate, rich clothes, and his studies, and working beautiful magic—

What on earth was she going to get him? Agnieszka stewed over the question all the way back to her cottage, at which point she realized she hadn’t even gotten an answer to the question she’d gone to the tower to ask in the first place. She wasn’t about to go back and ask Sarkan about breaking or circumventing wards _now_.

She still didn’t have any idea what to get him when she went to bed that night.

Maybe Sarkan’s frustration was a bit easier to understand, not that she’d admit it to him.

* * *

The answer came to her after the harvest. The booksellers came all the way out to their valley on the edge of Polnya, stopping first at the tower, as was their custom. Sarkan searched through their collections with careful patience, though he only came away with two new acquisitions. Agnieszka gave them a cursory search, but none of the volumes seemed to call to her the way spellbooks of her kind of magic did, and there was no chance of Sarkan missing a particularly rare edition that she could buy for him instead.

But it did jog her memory: when she was still his apprentice, he had mentioned a specific treatise on truth spells. She’d forgotten about it completely until now, but she knew that she’d seen the title while she was in Kralia. She wrote to Alosha that afternoon, sending the letter off with the booksellers; the reply came within a fortnight, along with a carefully wrapped package.

Agnieszka checked, though she didn’t really think Alosha would have sent her the wrong volume; it was Żółw’s Tractate, just as she’d asked. She had seen it in passing when she was digging through Ballo’s collection of improper books. It wasn’t fake, like some of the books had been, nor was it corrupted like the grimoire; the cover was a bit worse for wear, having been abandoned in that dark room for who knew how many years, but the pages within seemed fine.

“I managed to find you a gift for Midwinter,” Agnieszka announced when Sarkan came to her cottage that evening. She wasn’t expecting the look of utterly betrayal that he gave her.

“Now I definitely need to find you something, you infuriating wretch!”

“Are you serious?” Agnieszka demanded.

He only glared at her speechlessly, obviously working up to a real temper. Of all the ridiculous—

“Sarkan,” she said, more calmly—speaking his name as if she meant to start a working. It never failed to bring him up short, though she tried to use the trick sparingly. “I don’t need a gift. I’m happy that you want to get me something!” she added quickly, when his eyes narrowed. “But you came back. You’re here. That’s more than enough.”

He was trying to keep scowling, with limited success. Agnieszka turned away, going to the desk to find her recipe. “The baker in Olshanka gave me a recipe for makowiec last week. I thought we could make it and bring it to my parents’ for Midwinter.”

“It hasn’t even started to snow yet,” Sarkan said, though the weather had turned cold and the grey sky meant snow could come any time. “It won’t keep until then.”

“So we can practice making it now, and the one we bring for Midwinter will be perfect,” Agnieszka said patiently. He looked almost panicked when she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye; from the thought of celebrating Midwinter with her family? She busied herself with gathering the rest of the ingredients. “I’ve helped Kasia make it before.”

‘Helped’ might have been a slight exaggeration; watched and snuck ingredients while Kasia pretended not to notice would probably be more accurate. Sarkan made a doubtful noise, as if he was well aware of who was the talented baker, but came over to help her a moment later all the same.

Their first attempt was nothing short of a disaster. Sarkan ended up as messy as Agnieszka on a normal day; somehow, he’d managed to get flour in his hair.

“That was your doing!” Sarkan hissed, trying futilely to brush it out with his fingers. Agnieszka would concede that she had been a bit too enthusiastic with the mixing—just not aloud. The flour floating in the air just made her sneeze, and it was only Sarkan’s swift reflexes that saved the makowiec from a gruesome death on the floor.

That might have been a mercy, actually. The makowiec itself was charred rather badly, a combination of Sarkan’s naturally powerful fire workings and Agnieszka’s lack of a proper oven. Sarkan glared down at the sad, burnt cake in his hands.

“Kasia would know where we went wrong,” Agnieszka said wistfully.

“We could have used a proper kitchen, to start!”

“We can try again tomorrow. At the tower.” Agnieszka ignored his muttering and went over to open the door and let some of the smoke out. A cold gust of wind greeted her, accompanied by a flurry of snow: winter had arrived at last. She should have looked forward to it—the Wood was always quieter in winter—but somehow the sight of it only reminded her that she would not see Kasia until the season’s end, and perhaps not even then.

* * *

Sarkan only seemed to grow more tense as Midwinter drew closer, but he didn’t raise the question of a gift again.

They transferred the flower to a large pot filled with soil from the Wood and left it in her old room at the top of the tower. The strange bloom remained as vibrant as ever, despite its strange circumstances; if the cold weather affected it at all, it certainly didn’t show. The thorns had receded, and Sarkan convinced it to stop amplifying their emotions—“I was only thinking aloud, I wasn’t actually talking to it!”—and it seemed content to stay in its pot for the time being, so long as Sarkan remembered to water it every day. It was a little concerning that it had managed to root itself in one of Sarkan’s potion bottles in the laboratory the one time he forgot, but it seemed content to pretend at being a mundane, if beautiful, flower the rest of the time.

The makowiec was passable by the time the solstice came. By silent mutual agreement, Sarkan was the one to carry the cake; Agnieszka was still regrettably clumsy at times and even when she wasn’t, Sarkan found her attention to detail lacking. But she found his insistence that their contribution to her family’s Midwinter table be as perfect as possible just as amusing, so it was an equal exchange.

It had snowed the day before, but that hadn’t stopped the villagers for long. The road that followed beside the Spindle was cleared by the time she and Sarkan were ready to depart for her parents’ house. The translocation working was disorienting every time, but she managed not to stumble and get snow all over her skirts today when they emerged in front of her childhood home.

The sounds of her family’s merriment were audible even with the door closed tight, but one of her brothers heard her knocking and let them in. Most of her family was already there, but Agnieszka only had eyes for the woman sitting in the corner by the window.

Kasia laughed, her smile the same as always, when Agnieszka stumbled in her haste to reach her. She caught Agnieszka easily—like she always had—and set her on her feet.

“What are you doing here?” Agnieszka blurted out, catching Kasia’s hands before she could pull away. Her skin was smooth as polished wood, aside from several unfamiliar calluses. From learning the sword, Agnieszka realized; there was a sheathed blade propped in the corner.

“Sarkan said he wanted to surprise you. Apparently it’s only fitting, since you’re always surprising him,” Kasia said, glancing past Agnieszka’s shoulder.

“I said no such thing,” Sarkan grumbled, crossing his arms. He looked cautiously pleased.

“No,” Kasia agreed, “I made it sound nicer than what you actually wrote.”

Agnieszka laughed and reached out to take Sarkan’s hand as well. His shoulders tightened, but he allowed her to pull him over to her side. “I don’t know if my gift can hold a candle to yours.”

“It isn’t a competition,” Sarkan said, as if he hadn’t been fretting over it for months.

“I just can’t believe you’re here!” Agnieszka smiled at Kasia; she couldn’t stop smiling. “You didn’t say anything in your letter!”

“Well, I didn’t want to ruin the surprise,” Kasia said innocently.

“Nieshka, stop harassing your guests and come sit at the table,” her mother called. The table was laden with food, and her little nieces and nephews were waiting with obvious impatience. Agnieszka gave herself a mental shake and led Sarkan and Kasia over to the table.

* * *

Sarkan had brought several bottles of very good wine in addition to their makowiec; it was possible that Agnieszka drank almost an entire bottle herself. It was different than the last Midwinter she’d spent with her family, and a far cry from the lonely night she’d spent in the tower; but her parents acted as if nothing had changed, as if Sarkan was a regular guest at their table, and her brothers and their families followed their lead.

The makowiec was a success as well, much to Sarkan’s relief. He deflected most of the hesitant but earnest praise her family gave him, and excused himself from the table to get some fresh air as soon as he’d finished dessert. The house was rather warm from everyone packed inside, but it was unlike him to be so affected by the heat; still, Agnieszka only smiled at him as he left.

“Sarkan did most of the work,” Agnieszka confessed when her eldest brother’s wife asked her how she’d made it. “I got the recipe from the baker in Olshanka, but all I did was prepare the ingredients.”

“Can’t you just make it with magic?” her niece asked, leaning against her side.

“It’s not the same,” Agnieszka tried to explain, but even Sarkan didn’t quite understand what she meant. It seemed unlikely her family would be any different.

“You should try it. So we can know for sure,” her nephew said gravely, crowding in on her other side. Their remaining siblings were perched in Kasia and Sarkan’s abandoned chairs, all of them staring at her expectantly. Agnieszka blinked down at them, confused, but—Ah. All the makowiec was gone.

She glanced at their parents, but they seemed amused more than anything, so Agnieszka pulled the remains of a loaf of bread over and murmured, “ _Lirintalem_.” It transformed into another roll of makowiec before the children’s eyes, much to their delight. She cut it into slices for them, which quickly disappeared.

“It’s very good,” another nephew insisted.

“Yeah!” her niece chimed in.

“Why don’t you just eat sweets all the time, Nieshka!?”

Agnieszka laughed. “If you eat too much of anything, you’ll get tired of it. Even sweets.”

“ _I_ wouldn’t get tired of them.” The other children all nodded in agreement.

“Well, it’s a good thing I have all of you here to finish it for me,” Agnieszka told them. “What would I do without you?”

She left them laughing and eating the rest of the cake, pausing only to pull Sarkan’s cloak around her shoulders—it was somehow warmer than hers, always—before slipping outside.

Kasia and Sarkan were sitting on the carven log bench beside the road, just visible in the light spilling out of the windows. They were speaking, though she could hear the sound of their voices only, not the shape of their words; their conversation came to a halt as she approached, both of them turning to look at her. Their faces were so serious, though Kasia broke into a smile quickly enough, and there was enough room on the bench for her to join them, so she did.

Sarkan made a sound that seemed to want to be annoyed when a flailing elbow nearly caught him in the cheek—the snow was still rather deep and she’d had a lot of wine!—but came out more fond than anything as he steadied her long enough for her to fit herself into the space between them.

“Oh! Your gift.” It took her a moment to recall the words to summon it into her hand; she pressed the book into Sarkan’s hands. “Kasia is a much better gift, though.”

Sarkan ignored her, peeling back the wrapping with care; of course, he was one of those people who took their time opening a gift, rather than ripping it apart immediately.

“And I didn’t get you anything, Kasia!” Agnieszka realized, dismayed.

Kasia smiled at her. “Being with you again is more than enough.”

“That’s what I told Sarkan, and then he did this,” Agnieszka said. He had moved on to the twine, picking at the tie with a grim sort of determination. Good luck with that; Agnieszka had snarled it into a hopeless knot almost immediately, and her attempts to fix it had only made it worse.

“Well, I can go back to Kralia,” Kasia teased.

“No!” Agnieszka bit her lip, then added, more quietly, “Not yet, anyway.” Surely Kasia would stay for a few days, at least. Agnieszka wrapped her arm around Kasia’s shoulders, and Kasia allowed herself to be pulled closer; Agnieszka could not have moved her otherwise.

“Not yet. And certainly not forever,” Kasia agreed softly, all teasing gone from her voice.

On Agnieszka’s other side, Sarkan made a triumphant noise. “Żółw’s Tractate? Where on earth did you find it?” But he was already opening the worn cover, his eyes greedily devouring the words within.

“I can’t see the stars with your magelight there,” Agnieszka complained. Sarkan grumbled, but he put the book away and snuffed out the light.

It was a clear winter night, with no clouds to block the stars and the soft glow of the moon. They sat together in silence. Agnieszka could not say what Kasia and Sarkan thought of, but all she could think about what how very happy she was.

“This is the best Midwinter I can remember,” Agnieszka remarked, smiling up at the stars. “How long were you planning this, Sarkan?”

“The idea came to me soon after Kasia’s initial trip was canceled.”

Agnieszka turned to look at him. Sarkan stared back evenly, but colour began to flush his cheeks as he did; somehow she doubted it was from the cold, since he hadn’t even bothered with his cloak before coming outside.

“He wrote Alosha in a panic about a week ago,” Kasia said, her smile obvious in her voice. That smile was even more radiant when Agnieszka turned to look. “I understand he owes her several favours for casting some working to speed my horse so I could arrive in time, and also for making the Rosyans go home early.”

Agnieszka pressed her shoulder against Sarkan’s stiff one, smiling at him until some of his icy tension melted away. She was brimming with happiness; overflowing with it. She leaned over to kiss Sarkan’s cheek, still warm despite the cold temperature, and then Kasia on her other side. Kasia’s smooth-polished skin was warm too.

“I love you,” she told them happily, and though her own cheeks felt rather hot already, she pulled them both closer so she could bask in their warmth.


End file.
